Why Did Emperor Severus Spare an Engineer?
Victorious Roman Emperors followed a kill first policy when dealing with perceived threats. They ordered the execution of surrendered combatants, political leaders, women, children, and even friends.
The emperor Severus followed standard protocol and ordered the death of tens of thousands of people under his reign. Despite this, he spared the life of an enemy combatant, the Engineer Priscus.
Today I will discuss why Severus pardoned Priscus, and how the story of Severus and Priscus can help you in your career today.
Violence and death underpinned the lives of everyday ancient Peoples. Leaders of the ancient world killed enemies, civilians, and slaves on a great scale. Mithridates, for example, killed eighty thousand Romans in one day.
that, about forty years after the reduction of Asia, eighty thousand Romans were massacred in one day, by the cruel orders of Mithridates [Gibbon 1096-1097]
coordinated simultaneous attacks on Roman residents in towns on the west coast of what is now Turkey, from Pergamum in the north to Caunos, the ‘fig capital’ of the Aegean, in the south, killing – in highly inflated Roman estimates – somewhere between 80,000 and 150,000 men, women and children [Beard 270]
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